Cyberpunk 2077 has returned to the spotlight following the release of its brilliant anime spin-off, Cyberpunk Edgerunners; a Netflix Originals show released during the Fall anime season. Although it was thought that this would not be a good game for an anime adaptation, just like the other game adaptations previously done by other studios and was quickly forgotten by everyone, including their fanbase, this anime proved everyone wrong; not only did it receive a very positive response from anime fans, but the gamer fanbase also enjoyed it.
Due to its popularity, the game from which it was adapted saw a large increase in the number of players. The show stands out for its excellent product quality and storyline, which has seemingly reignited interest in the cyberpunk genre among video game enthusiasts and anime fans alike. Here are some suggestions if you’re looking for more similar content after watching the show.
Akudama Drive
In Kansai, a bustling metropolis with cybernetic panels dotting the neon landscape, which may initially appear to be a technological utopia, there is still a ruthless criminal underbelly that persists in the shadowy alleyways surrounding the brightly lit skyscrapers in the form of fugitives known as “Akudama.” The story follows an ordinary person, a girl who is mistakenly branded as an Akudama, one of the most dangerous. She gains the title “Swindler” after being wrongly accused of being a small-time burglar. She must outrun the militarized cops following them along with six other Akudama. They can each earn $10 million if they make it out alive and find a package for an unidentified bidder.
Watching these indomitable badasses repel executioners and deliver surprisingly funny one-liners is always thrilling. By contrasting its ruthless and seemingly impenetrable Akudama with Swindler, a sympathetic and helpless onlooker, the anime cleverly raises the stakes. With a ferocious neon visual spectacle bursting with sakuga and amazing visual effects unheard of in contemporary anime, the action is simple to follow. Akudama Drive is absolute madness. With amazing animation and insane characters, it takes the action-packed mayhem of a 1980s B-movie to absurd extremes. It employs the traditional cyberpunk look to convey a tale that is rife with biting social commentary and brilliant neon lights.
Ghost in the Shell
It is the year 2029. Four significant wars have occurred, ushering in a new era of technical development and fundamentally altering civilization as we know it. Cyborgs are common, which shows how far technology has advanced. Additionally, employing human brains allows for direct internet connectivity. In a world where people more closely resemble machines than other animals, cybernetic improvements, robotic AIs, and cyborgs are becoming more prevalent. However, as technology advanced, crime also began to grow as shady politicians, hackers, and other opportunists discovered how to exploit innovative systems.
The government creates Section 9, a covert group of expert operatives, to combat these threats in Japan, where similar crimes are often perpetrated. The story touches on philosophical issues like self-identity in a technologically sophisticated environment. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a woman of unparalleled intellect and chutzpah, is in charge of Section 9’s mission to combat cyberterrorism and safeguard the nation’s stability in the face of an impending future of rapid change. The Puppet Master, a cybercriminal, taps into the brains of cyborgs to steal information and commit other crimes. She is currently pursuing him.
Paprika
The movie Paprika largely avoids outlining the bounds and regulations of its world in favor of letting the story unfold as a “experience.” Even the movie’s exposition is first ambiguous. It is harder to explore the concepts despite making it more interesting. The DC Mini, a tool used by psychiatrists to enter their patients’ dreams and gain insight into their unconscious minds, serves as the novel’s central theme. In the near future, PT, a novel new psychotherapy approach, will be accessible. Using a “DC Mini” tool, it can act as a “dream detective” by penetrating people’s dreams and investigating their unconscious thoughts.
One of the prototypes is stolen, causing a commotion at the research facility, and the researchers who worked on the project soon find themselves unable to tell the difference between reality and their dreams, which start blurring into one before the government can adopt legislation allowing the use of such advanced mental technology. The device’s potential misuse in the wrong hands might be disastrous, allowing the operator to destroy a dreamer’s personality while asleep completely. Famous scientist Dr. Chiba Atsuko enters the dream realm as her exotic alter-ego, code-named “PAPRIKA,” in an effort to discover who is behind the plot to thwart the new invention.
Akira 1988
Neo-Tokyo, decimated by World War III and a mysterious black explosion of unprecedented size, has not yet fully recovered in 2019. Neo-Tokyo is a massive neon extravaganza that was hastily built over the ruins of old Tokyo. Skyscrapers and cutting-edge technology are combined with a volatile, extremely violent concoction of biker gangs, extreme poverty, and revolutionaries in this city, where terrorism and riots are commonplace.
Two bikers who are best friends and fierce rivals while being members of the same gang live in this barren city: Tetsuo Shima and Shoutarou Kaneda. In his haste to prove himself superior to Kaneda, Tetsuo pulls a stunt that unintentionally releases a government secret known only as Akira, whose appearance threatens to alter Neo-appearance Tokyo’s and the lives of its residents. Tetsuo discovers that he now possesses astounding telekinetic talents, making him the number one target of these nefarious Government agents.
Psycho-Pass
The setting of Psycho-Pass is a futuristic one in contemporary Japan, where it is simple to view someone’s mental state. If it is higher than the average rate, a number that describes one’s likelihood of committing a crime is assigned. This number is called the “Crime Coefficient.” These people are caught, if not killed, if they are too high up. The human psyche has never been in more danger than it is today in a technologically dependent world that appears to be so guarded and secure. The smart but inexperienced Inspector Tsunemori Akane is pushed into this environment. As the inspector and the other members of the Public Safety Bureau look into the persistent shadow of crime that hangs over Japan, we get to know more about what’s really going on behind in this “paradise”.
The plot in Psycho-Pass is presented to you on a silver platter with flowing animation and engaging, unsettling music, which is the first thing you’ll notice about it. The future, as presented by Psycho-Pass, alternates between slick and dirty but never becomes monotonous. There is always something beautiful to look at, whether it be the character designs or a high-tech device. It’s no secret that Production I.G is very wealthy, and they undoubtedly spent a lot of money to make this title look good. It takes place in a world where people have chosen commodity over individual freedom, but this is only a very clever illusion.
Ergo Proxy
The domed metropolis of Romdo contains one of the last human civilizations on Earth. The world was ravaged by a great ecological catastrophe thousands of years ago; as a result, life outside of these domes is now all but impossible. “AutoReivs,” humanoid-like robots designed to assist people in their daily lives, have been created to help humanity recuperate more quickly. However, AutoReivs have started to experience the mysterious “Cogito Virus,” an illness that gives them self-awareness. The AutoReiv companion of Re-l Mayer, the granddaughter of Romdo’s ruler, is tasked with looking into this incident. However, as Re-l tackles humanity’s worst atrocities, what initially appears to be a routine investigation quickly develops into a conspiracy.
Vincent Law, an AutoReiv expert in Romdo, is forced to face his demons when odd events start to happen all around him. As they work to uncover Romdo’s secrets and discover the true meaning of the mythical creatures known as “Proxies” (being someone’s follower or lower-rank duplicate), Re-l, Iggy, Vincent, and a young AutoReiv named Pino will form an unlikely partnership. Featuring a wide range of genres, including cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, action, mystery, drama, psychological, and even a little bit of comedy, romance, and a slice of life, Ergo Proxy is a very experimental show. The anime undoubtedly pushes you to think critically and consider your own life, and that is always regarded as a positive trait.
Serial Experiments Lain
Our tale opens with a young girl jumping off of a tall building. She obviously doesn’t make it. When other pupils at her school start receiving emails from her, things start to get bizarre. Though she lacks the motivation or expertise to work with even basic technology, our protagonist Lain Iwakura, a shy and introverted 14-year-old, reluctantly opens the email, which transports her right into Wired, a virtual world of communication networks similar to the internet. Lain’s world is turned upside down as she unravels mystery after puzzling enigma. At that point, she begins noticing more odd things around her and develops a fascination with technology.
Everywhere she goes, strange strangers known as the Men in Black appear; they start interrogating her and seem to know more about her than she does. Lain encounters more bizarre and odd situations as the boundaries between reality and cyberspace become increasingly hazy. Identity, consciousness, and perception acquire new meanings in these situations. Continuous Experiments An avant-garde psychological mystery series called Lain follows Lain as she makes crucial choices in both the real world and the Wired. Only Lain will comprehend the significance of their presence as one universe closes and another opens.
Texhnolyze
People in the shadowy underground city of Lux, ruled by several gangs of criminals, live in terror and despair. The city is ruled by three warring factions: the Organo, which dominates and resembles a mafia organization; the Salvation Union, a group that is ideologically against texhnolyze; and the Racan, a band of liberally inclined and disobedient youngsters. The gangs’ sole interaction with the outside world is through their “raffia” mining activity, which is also the city’s main economic driver. This unique substance, which is only found in Lux, serves as the basis for “texhnolyze” transplants, which let individuals use cybernetic prostheses to replace different parts of their bodies. A little girl with the ability to predict the future lives in a tranquil tribal community outside of the city in a location called Gabe.
This enigmatic institution, which is also in control of raffia manufacturing, delegated executive authority to a group called Organo, which is commanded by Keigo Oonishi—a self-righteous man with texhnolyzed legs who is said to hear the “voice of the city.” Lux’s fragile balance of power is upset when a mystery newcomer named Kazuho Yoshii begins committing crimes that pit the gangs against each other. In the midst of the pandemonium, two new characters emerge: Ichise, an ex-boxer mutilated by Organo and newly texhnolyzed by Eriko “Doc” Kamata, and Ran, a young florist with foresight. While Lux continues to spiral towards insanity, Ichise and Ran find themselves embroiled in the city’s greatest crisis.
The Animatrix
The Animatrix, a collection of nine animated films each with a different director and production studio, is a superb work of science fiction animation with its short storylines, range of visual styles, cybernetic futurism, man vs. machine attitude, and themes. It’s simple to regard this collection, which was released in the brief six-month window between RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS, as the standard type of transmedia promotional material for the movies and, at the time, an effective teaser. It significantly boosted the enthusiasm of their die-hard admirers for them. However, this project has attracted a lot of great talent, and several of the shorts have concepts that are more intriguing than anything that was created for the sequels.
However, the quality can vary, just like with any anthology of stories. The second short, “The Second Renaissance,” by Mahiro Maeda, is a two-part retelling of the machine war that resulted in the creation of the Matrix. The first short, “Final Flight of the Osiris,” is a direct prologue to The Matrix Reloaded. Beyond that, the entire movie becomes very disposable and monotonous. The films “World Record” and “Beyond” depict life for individuals who are still trapped in the Matrix. The strange short film “Program” takes place in a digital replica of feudal Japan. Peter Chung’s “Matriculated” is a strange and difficult-to-understand short film. The most notable of the second group is undoubted “A Detective Story,” written and directed by Watanabe and starring Trinity, but even it is quite unimportant.
Bubblegum Crisis
The story takes place in Megatokyo in the year 2032, a society where androids and synthetic lifeforms have advanced to the point where they even resemble regular people, with the exception that they lack the ability to speak. Originally created to save humanity, the mysterious company known as Genom now creates Boomers, with enormous destructive capacity as a new type of advanced weaponry capable of disguising themselves as people. Our heroines are a covert, autonomous group known as the Knight Sabers that possess some highly advanced suits and carry out tasks that the police, specifically the AD Police, a special branch of the police, are unable to complete. it is mostly to combat the rogue androids.
There are four main characters in this story: Stylia, the cool, collected group founder; Press, the group’s “action” girl who is also a well-known bar singer; Nene, the police informant who can be very cowardly and unpleasant when it comes to action; and Linna, a typical teenage girl. Leon McNichol, an AD Police investigator who has a crush on singer Priss, completes the cast as another engaging and trustworthy character (thus leading into his own OVA series). The series’ overall tone is smooth, ranging from comedy to drama and obscure cyberpunk scenes. The story also flows without much connection between episodes, making it a very episodic series, but in the end, they tend to be a “Case of the Day” alone episode type of stories with just small links between them.
A.D Police Files
A.D. POLICE FILES (1990) is a three-part Japanese OAV (Original Animation Video) precursor to BUBBLEGUM CRISIS (1987), an eight-part series about police and the costumed crime-fighters, the Knight Sabers, engaging in combat with Boomers (Boomers are robots or people who have cybernetically enhanced their bodies by 70% and are committing criminal acts). A.D. POLICE is set a few years earlier and center on the members of the title unit whose responsibility it is to fight crimes committed by Boomers at a period when humans and Boomers have intertwined their dependence upon one another. This anime series, as opposed to the preceding ones, emphasizes the problem of people trading their organs for cybernetic parts. This concept is further addressed in the later anime classic GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995).
There is a lot more violence, dismemberment, and violent death in this series than in BUBBLEGUM CRISIS. It is also more sexually fetishistic, with numerous shots of stunning women, both human and Boomer, wandering Mega-Tokyo streets while wearing lingerie (always with garters). In one mind-blowing scenario, a scientific woman strips off and sits on top of a massive cyborg. Unfortunately, the stunning women always pass away violently and brutally. On the other hand, each episode’s primary police protagonists are all female. The primary officer in the first and third episodes is Gina Marceau, a strong and hard-as-nails female police officer. In contrast, the lead investigator in the second episode is the youthful and impressionable Iris Cara, an ordinary police officer. (Interestingly, Gina’s partner is rookie cop Leon Nichols, who figures prominently in CRISIS and its sequel, BUBBLEGUM CRASH.)
Cyber City Oedo 808
After the cyberpunk masterpiece Akira premiere, Cyber City Oedo 808 was released. Imagining a time in the future when the industry in Japan had never recovered from the economic bubble of the 1980s and was still building technologically advanced infrastructure at a logarithmic rate. Three episodes of Cyber City 808 tell the stories of Sengoku, Gogul, and Benten, three distinct Cyber Police personnel.
Sengoku is your usual hothead and exudes a cyberpunk air a la Journey to the West. Google is beefcake heavy and also an expert at hacking computers. Benten, the more reflective of the three, is left wearing clothing with David Bowie’s influences from the 29th century. You learn more about the inner workings of the futuristic city of Oedo and the histories of each character with each new episode. Each installment also has a mystery that needs to be solved, which makes sense, given that the characters are police officers.
Battle Angel Alita (OVA)
This film is set in the distant future in Zalem. This utopian metropolis dominates the horizon from high in the sky, which is actually a massive satellite floating above the city. The filthy underbelly known as The Scrapyard lies beneath it, storing the entirety of the city’s garbage. Humans and cyborgs survive by any means necessary among the massive waste piles. Daisuke Ido, a cyborg repair specialist, discovers the head of a young girl cyborg while scavenging an old android parts dump. He calls her Alita, or Gally in the Japanese version, and is building her a new body. Alita appears to have no recollection of her previous existence upon activation, but she quickly demonstrates remarkable fighting abilities.
She doesn’t seem to mind much as long as she is near Ido. But she soon discovers that Ido is a hunter-warrior, a bounty hunter for the government of The Scrapyard. Despite Ido’s warning, she decides to become one herself, resurrecting her long-forgotten fighting abilities. Later on, she begins working as a bounty hunter and meets Yugo, a young boy with the impossible dream of visiting Zalem. Alita sets out to help Yugo, oblivious to the fact that his dream can only end in misery.
Blame!
The intricate networks of machines in the post-apocalyptic future have wreaked havoc and ruined the world of humans. Killy a silent loner, traverses the enormous technological realm known as “The City,” armed with an extraordinarily potent weapon called a Gravitational Beam Emitter. He is looking for Net Terminal Genes, a (perhaps dead) genetic trait that gives people access to the “Netsphere,” a kind of electronic command system for The City. The City is a vast artificial construction divided into enormous “floors” by nearly impenetrable “Megastructure” barriers. Dispersed human and transhuman tribes and hostile cyborgs known as Silicon Life live in the City.
The Net Terminal Genes seem to hold the key to stopping the Megastructure’s unchecked, chaotic growth and preventing the murderous robot army known as the Safeguard from wiping out all of mankind. Killy meets Cibo, a clever engineer, and teams up with him along the journey. The City’s Authority, which is unable to prevent the Safeguard from resisting them, indirectly supports their mission. Together, Killy and Cibo embark on a difficult trip to fulfill their missions while dealing with several difficulties.
Armitage III
The story takes place in the year 2046 in the city of Saint Lowell on Mars. Earth has become overpopulated, and Mars has been terraformed to address this issue. The first generation of androids aided humanity in the terraforming process. By the time the story takes place, the second generation of androids had become widely used for service and pleasure purposes. Unfortunately, Mars has been experiencing declining birthrates, and while the planet is autonomous from Earth, this is one of the main motivators for the story. The plot is well thought out overall (with a few inconsistencies), and the pacing is excellent. There’s a good mix of action and intrigue and a few political machinations. There’s a good mix of action, intrigue, and political machinations. The story has flaws, but the premise is plausible, and given the advances in medical science since 1995, it may prove far more “real”.
Detective Ross Sylibus is transferred to Mars after a country singer on her trip is murdered. To make matters even more complicated, the vocalist is a “Third”—a robot that looks and feels like a human. Sylibus is partnered with Armitage, a beautiful female officer with a bad attitude. As they investigate the murder of the singer and other women on Mars, they uncover a plot that could lead to their deaths at the hands of the Martian government, and as the plot unfolds, they become increasingly concerned.
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